New Zealand Sex Worker Wins Landmark Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

LOS ANGELES—Sex workers employed by legal brothels have the same rights to be free from sexual harassment as any other workers. That principle was confirmed in a lawsuit by a New Zealand sex worker who on Monday won a six-figure settlement from her employer, according to a report by the BBC.   Under New Zealand law, the identities of the both the sex worker and the target of her lawsuit, as well as the exact amount of the settlement, were not made public. But sex worker advocate Dame Catherine Healy, of the New Zealand Sex Workers Collective, said that the court decision serves as a “wake up call” for sexually oriented businesses.  "It's great to see a settlement of this type has been awarded in the context of sex work to a sex worker," Healy told the BBC. "It takes courage to stand up in the workplace, any workplace.” Healy, a former schoolteacher and sex worker, in 2018 became the first sex worker rights advocate to receive the honorific “Dame” from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. She founded the NZSWC in 1987. Thanks largely to her activism, New Zealand legalized sex work in 2003, allowing brothels to operate as ordinary businesses — and granting the sex workers employed in the legal brothels the same legal protections and benefits as any other workers. Earlier this year, New Zealand became one of the few countries to give sex workers full access to COVID-19 pandemic economic relief assistance, due to the requirements of the 2003 law pushed by Healy. The sex worker who won the lawsuit was represented by the New Zealand Office of Human Rights Proceedings, whose director, Michael Timmons, said that the court decision set an important precedent in the ongoing battle against workplace sexual harassment. “All workers, regardless of the type of work they do, have the right to freedom from sexual harassment in the workplace. We encourage all business owners and employers to ensure that they understand and respect those rights,"  Timmons said in a statement. In 2014, a New Zealand sex worker won a similar lawsuit against a brothel in Wellington, New Zealand, though the settlement in that case was only $21,000 in New Zealand currency — less than $15,000 in U.S. cash. “Context is everything. Even in a brothel language with a sexual dimension can be used inappropriately in suggestive, oppressive, or abusive circumstances,” New Zealand’s Human Rights Tribunal said in deciding the 2014 case. “If in a brothel language or behavior of a sexual nature could never be considered unwelcome or offensive sex workers would be denied the protection of the Human Rights Act.” In the new case, decided this week, the sex worker was awarded the six-figure settlement both for lots earnings as well as “emotional harm” caused by the sexual harassment she suffered. Photo By David Peterson / Pixabay